Who am I?

I’m a, blogger and event/marketing/media consultant.
Blogging since 2002 and online since 1993 (I still remember my
Compuserve account number), I live in North London with my husband and
toddler, but was born in Cheadle.

Current interests: the planet, healthy living, cooking, Art Deco
ceramics, all flavours of CSI, sensible financial planning, social
media, virtual worlds and the arts in general. All this may change: a
woman’s prerogative, after all.

Ze Chermans, And How I Feel

Back in the mid-nineties, I had a job in the marketing
department of
a B2B services player, a big one. I was all negotiating with printers,
buying envelopes by the million and buying media direct without agency
commission.

A few months later, I got involved in a start-up project in
Israel.
Weird from the get-go: Mr Big who owned the company insisted that the
product marketing cycle be over Jewish New Year, on the basis that all
countries had to fall in with his British mode of business, despite my
telling him that no-one would be even working then. And the team was
made up of me, a JAP from New York, and a German guy whose father was a
priest who'd been involved in all the reparations stuff after the war,
and had guilt tattooed in indellible ink across his forehead. The A
Team, we weren't.

And weirdest of all, the project was run as a subsidiary of
our
German office. I tried to tell Mr Big that most businesses in Israel
probably wouldn't want to sign a contract with a German company -
because of the war - but he wasn't having any of it. Efficiency, that's
what counts. Everyone else is marching out of
step (to coin a war analogy).

So I'm in Israel, setting up a pilot project with my
colleagues, and we're like the comedy Three Musketeers. Sample JAP: gee, is
there no Zagat's guide to Tel Aviv? Er, no, sister, it's
mostly felafel stalls.
Sample guilty German to Yael Dayan, who we had rented an apartment
from: Yael. You sound like a man. It is all the cigarettes you smoke. People
were also a little scared because he answered the phone by barking
"Eichart!", which left most Israelis quaking in their sandals. Sample
me: I just can't negotiate the way I can at home. Everyone here's
got chutzpah.

So Wolfram, the General Manager from Germany, is coming out to
check up on us half-way through the project.

History: Wolfram had trained in the London office, and we'd
got off
to a bad footing, because he was working on a TV/radio project, and
gave me the complete runaround. His media plan included a publication
called Broadcast News. I talked to the world and her lover trying to
track it down. He was senior. Eventually, in a meeting, I said to him
"are you sure you don't mean Broadcast? Not Broadcast
News?"
As I said Broadcast News, I did that thing with my hands like I was a
film cameraman - charades - to indicate a film. I also tried to do a
Holly Hunter impression, but that's hard when you don't have dark hair
and you're from Eastern European peasant stock.

"Not Broadcast," he replied, firmly, losing face, "Broadcast
News".
I resisted the temptation to do the charades thing that indicates it's
a book.

But the damage was done: his star was on the ascendant, on
account
of his magic with a spreadsheet, and general efficiency, and I got
black marks from him for enfooling him in a meeting. So I had to push
really hard to get on the Israel project, because he didn't want me.
Which was odd, because there weren't a huge number of people queuing up
to go to a war-torn country in the Middle East - we all had some
previous.

Another piece of history: after London and before Israel, I
worked
on a global project for Mr Big, going round each of the offices and
standardising their key technology. Most people rolled out the red
carpet: I came straight from Head Office, they'd get whatever I needed,
Ma'am.

Not Germany. Apart from the fact that I got the culture all
wrong
and kept calling people by their first name, Wolfram had power. So I do
my whole little presentation to the management team of what we're
looking for from them (code for what they have to give us), and whereas
everyone else kowtowed and ran out and got it, he said, looking at my
list "von, two unt sree, ve vill give you. Four, ve vill not. Five, you
vill tell us vot ze other offices are doing." He said this as he shone
the bright light in my face. I felt a little uncomfortable.

He offered me lunch. Now the British bombed most of Frankfurt
during
the war - don't mention the war - so the office was in a new shiny
high-rise in the burosdadt, and he took me in the glass elevator, down
to the basement where the restaurant was. Cool marble floors. As he got
out of the lift, I realised he had those clicky things on his shoes,
toes tapping against the granite as he walked. Suddenly, I didn't feel
hungry. Over lunch, he told me about his right wing politics while I
tried not to think about the war.

So back to the plot. I'm in a pokey rented office in downtown
Tel
Aviv with the Guilty German and the JAP, and Wolfram rolls into town.
Books himself into the Hilton; no appartment rental for him, he's all
luxury and service-enabled. Comes into the office, tells us he had a
hard time at security in the airport, and goes to the beach for two
weeks.